Thursday, May 5, 2011

Deciphering the diaper deluge

Tonight I had the most amazing 90-minute facial/foot massage/hand massage from my friend Jeannie at Perle Holistic Skincare. I'm feeling so nice and relaxed... that was just what my tense and increasingly achy body needed. I've got several massages scheduled for the next two months, and I'm now realizing how important they'll be. :-)

Our first cloth diaper purchase: the Bumboo.

Now on to the real topic of this post, cloth diapers. I mentioned a little while ago that I was overwhelmed to learn that there were so many different diapering systems out there. So we took action: we hosted a cloth diapering class at our house recently, run by a local doula who is extremely knowledgeable about this topic. Five other pregnant moms and two other dads joined me and Stuart at our home to learn about all these various systems and how they worked. The teacher brought a ton of examples so we could see what she was talking about.

Before we had the class, I saw an online deal for a diaper called the Bumboo (the photo above) and they had good reviews from moms online, so I bought a two-pack. We learned that these Bumboos will need a diaper cover around the outside of them, but that's common for several types of diapers.

Another nice thing about the class was that the teacher shared several ways she easily makes different parts of the diaper (like inserts and liners) by cutting up pieces of cloth -- much cheaper than buying those parts, and it doesn't even involve sewing. Nice tip.

The result of the class was that we were still quite overwhelmed by all the choices, but we felt much more confident that we are at least more familiar with the options and can try to make informed decisions about which ones we like. Overall, the message I got was clear: We won't really know what works best for us until our son is here. So in the meantime, we'll try to stock up on a few different types, and then just try them out.

We felt brave enough after the class to even start a second gift registry on Amazon that includes several types of diapers to help us get started. That's much better than where we were a month ago!